Thread by @AgnesCallard

I just read a paper so fascinating I decided you needed a big twitter thread overview.

The paper argues that Socrates did not look like Socrates.

1/11 🧵
journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.10…

(TLDR: Socrates' appearance--ugly, snub-nosed, satyr-like--was a later construction by Plato, Xenophon & others seeking to rehabilitate him, & philosophy, in the decades after his trial.) 2/11

After Socrates was put to death by the Athenians, the community was split: some supporting the verdict against him, others (mainly philosophers) opposing it. 3/11

The portraits we have of Socrates, originals of which date to the 4th C (so, the century after he died), are very striking: Socrates is pointedly *not* depicted like a beautiful "kalos k' agathos" (noble and good) Athenian gentleman. 4/11

Note:
(1) The satyr-like appearance of the portraits corresponds to how he's described in Xenophon's Symposium and Plato's Symposium, and nowhere else
(2) those two texts have a remarkably apologetic character (they defend Socrates against the charges from his trial) 5/11

Could it be that Socrates just actually looked like a Satyr in real life? 6/11

There's good reason to think the answer is no. "No text earlier than Plato’s and Xenophon’s symposium dialogues mentions Socrates’s ugly appearance. Indeed, his individual physiognomy is never commented upon at all." The best evidence is Aristophanes' silence, see below. 7/11

Connecting Socrates' story with that of the satyr Marsyas suggests a (new) narrative template into which to insert the story of Socrates' trial... 8/11

...and, in addition, the surprising ugliness of the satyr image is meant to prompt the viewer/reader into rethinking what they thought they knew about Socrates the "criminal" 9/11

Ultimately, the revisionist project was astonishingly successful, not only at rehabilitating philosophy and Socrates, but at (literally) giving him a new face. 10/11

Here's the paper again in case you want to read the whole thing, thanks to the authors Maria Luisa Catoni and Luca Giuliani for this excellent work. 11/11
journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.10…

(Maria Luisa Catoni does not seem to be on twitter, "Luca Giuliani," on the other hand, is, a hundredfold--if you happen to know that the author of this paper is one of them, please tag him!)